Hawaii-born Steve Case, who co-founded America Online in 1985 and is the current chairman and CEO of Revolution, was the keynote speaker at the 164th annual Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii membership luncheon.

He addressed a packed house—more than 900 people filled the Hilton Hawaiian Village Coral Ballroom, testament to the work the Chamber has done to increase membership through a "One and Done" initiative, in which each current member was tasked with bringing one new member into the fold. According Chamber President and CEO Sherry Menor-McNamara, the goal by 2016 is to double membership to 2,000, "to show that the business community can stand up for change."

The luncheon kicked of with a brief and efficient vote to induct the new board of directors, read about that here, after which Menor-McNamara spoke, then guest presenter U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono spoke about the recent "Hawaii on the Hill" event the Chamber conducted in Washington, D.C., more about that here.

Emcee Howard Dicus, of Hawaii News Now, and Case then took to comfy chairs on stage for a casual Q&A conversation. I was most struck by these observations from Case:

On where growth comes from:"The sector with the best prospects for growth [in the United States] are young, high-growth starts. These will be critical if we're going to rebuild our economy."

On crazy ideas:"When we started AOL, only 3 percent of the people in the U.S. were online, and then only for about an hour a week. For 10 years, people said we were crazy to try to get the whole country online. And for 10 years, they looked like they were right." Until, suddenly, they were wrong. "Chipotle started with one place selling burritos. Now it's a $20-billion company. Under Armour, started out as one guy selling T-shirts in Baltimore. The Fortune 500 list is filled with giants that were startups first."

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